Savin' Me
by Aldara Gaea
Summary: No one knows that Sirius was in love. Really in love  and its a character that everyone knows. If you've ever wondered why we never found out who Sirius might have been with before Azkaban, you're about to find out... and its a sadly tragic tale.


**Ok, now this one is a little tricky – I have to kinda set up the scene for you first. It's actually a fanfic of a fanfic, which sounds kinda bad, lol. Anywho, my good friend Mikki, from the Harry Potter boards, wrote a fantastic L/J fic. In her story, Sirius is secretly in love with Alice, who ends up marrying Frank Longbottom (of course). But the… acuteness of Sirius' love for her and the way that he puts it aside (she's completely oblivious, being the adorable ditz she is) so that she can be happy made me want to cry in the end (I even hated Frank a bit, which is hard coz he's such a sweety) – but Sirius never gets over it. I really think that his having an unrequited love makes him even more human. This is a little dareker, but please tell me what you think!!**

**_The lyrics are Nickelback's "Savin' Me"_ and I don't own any of the characters, they belong only to JK Rowling. Enjoy!**

**Savin' Me**

The dark, lonely island stood in the midst of a crashing mass of waves, sinister in its isolation. A clammy mist hung low on the slippery rocks and clung like a heavy blanket to the menacing walls of Azkaban prison. The Dementors that haunted the dreary buildings glided among the buildings and kept their tireless watch on those imprisoned in their world of horror.

In one dank cell a ragged man was heaped in a dripping corner. His once full face was skeletal and deathly white. Black holes were all that was left of once laughing eyes and his hair hung in long tatters, unwashed and matted.

_**Prison gates won't open up for me  
On these hands and knees I'm crawlin'  
Oh, I reach for you**_

The barred door in the opposite wall clanged open and a tall, black hooded figure hovered in the frame, several more floating eagerly behind. The man cowered back, whimpering pathetically. The Dementor took an over-deep breath and leisurely lowered a small tray to the floor. Then, just as slowly, it turned and glided out, the door slamming closed ominously behind it.

After a long wait to be sure the devils wouldn't return he painfully tried to move. With a howl, he collapsed into a bony heap once more. Tears escaped the corners of his eyes and his breathing was ragged.

_Look at yourself Sirius,_ he thought bitterly, _you're a bloody mess! _

He wrenched himself to his hands and knees and transformed into his now very familiar other form. A giant shaggy dog hunched in his place and he let fly a heart wrenching howl of misery. He wearily made his way to the frugal meal on the floor and began to eat the soggy bread and tasteless soup.

_**Well I'm terrified of these four walls  
These iron bars can't hold my soul in  
All I need is you  
Come please I'm callin'  
And oh I scream for you  
Hurry I'm fallin', I'm fallin'**_

The walls of the small cell pressed in on Sirius as he tried, unsuccessfully, to sleep. His thoughts wandered to a face, one of the few good memories left to him that had helped keep him sane in the hell hole he was stuck in – Alice.

He remembered her sparkling eyes and her hearty laughter when they had pranked together in Hogwarts, a time in a seemingly very distant past. He felt keenly the sense of terrible loss on her wedding day, the day he'd lost all hope of having the one he truly loved.

He didn't blame Frank Longbottom, and he loved Alice too much to hate her husband and his good friend, but the bitterness of that loss would always be fresh in Sirius' heart and he'd vowed that he would love no other. Regret and despair overwhelmed him and he found himself adding to the moaning screams of his miscreant neighbours.

"ALICE!!" he cried in pure agony, tearing at his filthy robes and ruined face. "Alice…… if only you had seen…… if only I hadn't been too much of a bloody prat to say something!!"

_**Show me what it's like  
To be the last one standing  
And teach me wrong from right  
And I'll show you what I can be  
Say it for me  
Say it to me  
And I'll leave this life behind me  
Say it if it's worth saving me  
**_

But his raging did nothing to hold back the flood of misery that inevitably engulfed him.

He yelled again and threw himself onto his face in frustration. The cold stone floor was slimy with grime and he looked up again slowly. The image of Alice was so clear in his mind that he could see her standing in front of him. He stretched out a claw-like hand, begging her to come into existence.

"Alice!" he pleaded, his voice gravelly from disuse and abuse.

Her form wavered and fell from his eyes like water, leaving only empty space and filthy walls. His throat seized up, and his suffering was greater than he could express. It swelled up in his chest and made his heart feel like it was burning in a fierce yet cruelly slow furnace.

Everything he ever did that he had enjoyed, that he had taken pride in, scrolled sluggishly through his mind as he struggled to recall each. _And what for Padfoot?? _he thought cynically, _to be thrown away because you were too chicken! Too chicken to tell her how you really felt and too chicken to save your best friend!_

_**Heaven's gates won't open up for me  
With these broken wings I'm fallin'  
And all I see is you**_

Tears now poured freely down his face. James had been like a brother to him; he had been everything that his real brother, Regulus, had never been. And Alice was like a sister, even a mother in a peculiar sense. At first he had thought his jealousy of Frank had been simple brotherly overprotection. But he could only hold onto that explanation for so long, and eventually came to admit to himself that he loved Alice Perry.

But when he realised what he was feeling, his automatic response was to suppress all evidence of it. It had been hard and there where plenty of times when all he wanted was to reach out and grab her, hold her close, let his love show. And that had been his downfall.

_**These city walls ain't got no love for me  
I'm on the ledge of the eighteenth story  
And oh I scream for you  
Come please I'm callin'  
And all I need from you  
Hurry I'm fallin', I'm fallin'**_

Sirius rolled over onto the straw mat that served as a bed, banging the floor with his fist. It was mortifying to him that even now she had no idea that his feelings toward her were much, much more than she would have conceived in her beautifully innocent mind. He attempted a grin at the thought of Alice's reaction on hearing herself being described as innocent.

But the fact of the matter was that, as much as she wasn't aware of it, Alice was protected from many things that would surely make her life more complicated than her carefree and simple disposition could handle. Even Frank had some idea of Sirius' true feelings towards his wife. It was that knowledge, Sirius ruefully realised, that would have been the main reason for Frank's eagerness to get married to her as soon as possible.

With disgust Sirius lifted his head and looked around the unctuous cell. But his ultimate downfall had been cowardice._You were too scared that you'd lose what you had, Padfoot, and that's the truth of it._ He let his head fall back with a crack, trying to turn his thoughts to something else than the misery he found himself in.

With a wrenching effort he pulled his mind to more cheerful thoughts. What would Alice be doing in her life now? It had been three years since he had been locked away. _She and Frank would surely have kids by now, _he thought. Another tired smile crept onto his broken face at the very idea. _Yes… lots of little blonde scamps running around with purple bubblegum wrappers ( A/N) flowing out of their pockets._

Sirius even managed to laugh at that. For a wonderful moment small memories, thoughts and feelings that had been taken from him within the first year of his imprisonment, were perfectly bright and clear in his foggy, grey memory. Though they were wrenched from his mind even as he thought them, he persisted anyway.

_**All I need is you  
Come please I'm callin'  
And oh, I scream for you  
Hurry I'm fallin', I'm fallin'  
**_

"Only for you Alice," he whispered hoarsely into the night, "I'd go through the very Veil of the Dead to see your angel face again."

The saddest and loneliest of sighs escaped him. A small beam of moonlight suddenly illuminated his unkempt face through the tiny barred window above him. The ghost of a smile crossed his face once more. _She must have heard me, _he thought vaguely. _Not that it'd matter… even when I said that to her for real she didn't understand just what I meant. _

Again, the melancholy of Azkaban crept into his mind, but he wasn't too tired to fight against it a little longer. Even his Alice would cry if she saw him so depressed as that. His tragic love for her would never trouble her beautiful dreams if he could help it and it was that thought that finally sent him off into another night of restless sleep.

_**Show me what it's like  
To be the last one standing  
And teach me wrong from right  
And I'll show you what I can be  
Say it for me  
Say it to me  
And I'll leave this life behind me  
Say it if it's worth saving me  
**_

Though he was trapped this confined cell with little clear memory left of his life before, Sirius Black knew that he could not give up his hopes. Somewhere out there Alice lived on, and he knew she thought of him everyday. He had once vowed he'd stop himself from falling in love with Alice, but she had done nothing to help him in that promise. And even being so far away from her, he found himself in a decent faster and steeper than he could've ever imagined. But even his superwoman couldn't stop him now.

_**Hurry I'm fallin'**_

(A/N – the gum wrappers thing is another thing that Mikki explains in her fic. Alice is randomly weird, and one of her mottos is that 'Gum wrappers fix everything'. So, whenever she and Sirius are fighting or, as is more often the case, when Sirius is depressed, she gives him gum wrappers and it makes it all better… lol. If you want to read her story, please go to the Harry Potter Message Boards and search "Catch You When You Fall" I'd really recommend it!)


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